Grateful for the sub-title that makes clear this has nothing to do with shroud waving Comrade Corbyn cynically jumping on any passing bandwagon. At the point of the war where the Allies could scent victory over Germany, the V1 began arriving over London. This is a graphic account of the most deadly V1 attack of WWII. Aerial bombing is never a pretty sight, but the use of crude unmanned flying bombs removes all pretence of deliberately targeting military sites. – Highly Recommended.
NAME: Send More Shrouds, The V1 Attack on the Guards' Chapel 1944 FILE: R2568 AUTHOR: Jan Gore PUBLISHER: Pen & Sword BINDING: hard back PAGES: 188 PRICE: £19.99 GENRE: Non Fiction SUBJECT: WWII, World War 2, World War II, Second World War, 1944, V1, Vengeance Weapons, flying bomb, doddle bug, UAV, drone, ramjet, gyroscope,
ISBN: 1-47385-147-5
IMAGE: B2568gjpg BUYNOW: http://tinyurl.com/yay2rxg7 LINKS: DESCRIPTION: Grateful for the sub-title that makes clear this has nothing to do with shroud waving Comrade Corbyn cynically jumping on any passing bandwagon. At the point of the war where the Allies could scent victory over Germany, the V1 began arriving over London. This is a graphic account of the most deadly V1 attack of WWII. Aerial bombing is never a pretty sight, but the use of crude unmanned flying bombs removes all pretence of deliberately targeting military sites. - Highly Recommended. The V1 was a weapon of mass desperation. There is much debate about the ethics of targeting towns with aerial bombing and the prospect of massive civilian casualties. This is in many respects a question of virtue signalling and hypocrisy. Through history, armies have taken and sacked villages and towns with absolutely no regard for civilians. An enemy is an enemy, to the victor the spoils. It is myth that warfare is chivalrous and ethical where warriors only attack other warriors, respecting the sick, the old and the young, the women and children. What the two world wars did was introduce the ability to cause mass death from a relatively safe distance and require women to fill the void, left by men joining the military, to keep production going for civil and military consumption. When the Germans carried out air raids on the British Isles during WWI, and used their cruisers to bombard coastal towns, it was deliberately intended to cause terror and break the British will. British air raids were targeted in the main on airship sheds and naval ports. That did not protect civilians living close to these targets because bombing techniques were primitive. Germany then went on during the Spanish Civil War to polish their ability to mount terror raids. Towns holding against the Nazi-backed Franco were deliberately laid waste as an example. It was therefore no great surprise when the Germans again used area bombing against British towns and deliberately targeted some of the most beautiful Medieval towns for no better reason than they featured in a German guide book for tourists as places of great interest and beauty. The RAF and USAAF did make some attempt to limit collateral damage although it can be argued this was because they wanted to cause maximum damage to military assets and war production where every bomb striking a home or a hospital was a less productive bomb. The V1 and V2 were deliberately designed as vengeance weapons and the greater the casualty rate the better, particularly civilian casualties. The first weapon to enter service was the V1. It was a relatively simple device. A small unmanned aeroplane, it was powered by a cheap ramjet and had a very crude guidance system. Fired from a catapult, it flew straight and level towards the British coast at relatively low altitude and at a similar speed to the best piston engine fighters serving the RAF. The gyro controlled guidance just kept the flight path straight and the altitude constant. When the fuel was used, the V1 was put into a dive and hit whatever was unfortunate enough to be below it. Targeting was therefore very crude and comprised the fuel load and the direction the catapult pointed in. The Germans hoped to receive information on where the V1s fell to refine the crude targeting methods. As the agents inserted by Germany had either been turned of eliminated, German intelligence received damage reports that the British wanted to send then with the purpose of getting the Germans to point their V1s away from profitable targets. The RAF soon discovered that the V1 was potentially very vulnerable. A box barrage from anti-aircraft guns moved out of the towns to the Chanel Coast could destroy a large number of V1s because they were flying in a straight line at a fixed altitude and speed. The best piston engine fighters and the first Meteor jet fighters could also be used to destroy V1s. As small aircraft, the cruise missiles could be caught and shot down, but their gyroscopes coil be toppled by flying along side and tipping the V1 by bringing a wing up under the missile's wing. As a result, the V1 scourge was less than at first feared but that was no consolation for those blown up by the relatively small number that made it through the defences or fell onto populated areas after being hit by AAA or fighter aircraft, or crashed deliberately when their fuel was all used up. The author has told the story of one V1 that found a target to devastating effect and placed that incident in the context of the bombing campaign on London. There is good illustration in the form of a photo-plate section.